Georg Cantor

Georg Cantor theorem was born in (born March 3, 1845, St.

Petersburg, Russia—died January 6, 1918,) in set theory, the
theorem that the cardinality (numerical size) of a set is strictly
less than the cardinality of its power set, or collection of
subsets. In symbols, a finite set S with n elements contains 2n
subsets, so that the cardinality of the set S is n and its power set
P(S) is 2n. While this is clear for finite sets, no one had seriously
considered the case for infinite sets before the German
mathematician Georg Cantor—who is universally recognized as
the founder of modern set theory—began working in this area
toward the end of the 19th century.
The 1891 proof of Cantor’s theorem for infinite sets rested on a
version of his so-called diagonalization argument, which he had
earlier used to prove that the cardinality of the rational
numbers is the same as the cardinality of the integers by
putting them into a one-to-one correspondence. The notion
that, in the case of infinite sets, the size of a set could be the
same as one of its proper subsets was not too surprising, as
before Cantor almost everyone assumed that there was only
one size for infinity. However, Cantor’s proof that some infinite
sets are larger than others—for example, the real numbers are
larger than the integers—was surprising, and it initially met with
great resistance from some mathematicians, particularly the
German Leopold Kronecker. Furthermore, Cantor’s proof that
the power set of any set, including any infinite set, is always
larger than the original set led him to create an ever increasing
hierarchy of cardinal numbers, ℵ0, ℵ1, ℵ2…, known as transfinite
numbers. Cantor proposed that there is no transfinite number
between the first transfinite number ℵ0, or the cardinality of the
integers, and the continuum (c), or the cardinality of the real
numbers; in other words, c = ℵ1. This is now known as the
continuum hypothesis, and it has been shown to be an
undecidable proposition in standard set theory.